CHAPTER IX.

EVISA AMONG THE HILLS.

Before eight o'clock next morning we were descending the gorge opposite the house, in order to mount it on the other side, and visit the picturesque convent.

Our coffee and dry bread had been served to us at half-past seven by the "chamber-maid."

This important person was represented by a pretty rosy-cheeked girl of twelve, who combined her chamber duties with those of waitress, and who, at this stage of the morning, was attired in a déshabille of nightdress body and coloured petticoat, with bare feet. Later on, when we returned from our walk, she was in full dress, having added a white head handkerchief, black jacket, white stockings, and shoes.

This Vico walk was one of the loveliest we enjoyed in the island. The steep road that climbed up the hill-side was shaded by oak and ilex trees; numberless sparkling streams dashed down from above and beneath us, and brilliant cyclamen nestled everywhere lovingly amongst the ferns--bracken, felix mas, parsley, walrue, maidenhair, and polypodium--luxuriating on this damp hill-side.

Below us writhed the serpentine Liamone; before us rose the great brown walls of the Monte Libbio rocks; and each corner that we turned, showed new gorges, fresh wooded hills upon one side, and more exquisite ranges of steepest rocks and purest snow mountains on the other.

The convent, old and grey, its walls encrusted with damp and half hidden by clustering weeds, was a strongly built edifice, overlooking the very edge of the precipitous slope, and bearing the usual mixed likeness to a church and a fortress.

It looked sad, silent, and deserted now; and was a strange contrast to a gaudy but handsome little family chapel in course of erection a few yards off.

This was built of black and white marble, Florentine fashion, with an enormous crucifix inside, and family shields outside the walls, with here and there niches for the coffins of its owner's family.

A little lower down the road is a rough-looking farmhouse, where lodgings are let in summer to those of the Ajaccio _élite_ who care to rough it in this lovely scenery.

As we turned homewards, the shadows were retreating from the roadway, and the sun's power was growing intense.

We were glad to rest upon the low stone bridge, where arbutus overhung the way, and where the cool moss beneath was dripping under the spray of the little river.

A cuckoo was calling through the tree-tops merrily, while the mother goats, creeping into the shade, cried to their wandering kids; and a woman, standing on a rock above us, shading her eyes from the glaring sun, beckoned to her children playing in the valley far below, shouting, "Maria! O Maria! O Santo!" in her sing-song, chant-like voice across the sultry air.

By ten o'clock we were in the carriage for Evisa, a village nearly 2800 feet above the sea level, where we were to spend the next night, and which is the best starting-point for the forests of Aïtone and Valdoniello. The ascent to the top of the Col Sevi, 1600 feet high, was long and steep, with grand views, lying through many a wild and rugged hill varied by chestnut groves, through which gleamed the everlasting snow barriers on every side.

Then through ilex woods, soft and shady, with many a sylvan glade between their gnarled, huge, moss-hugged trunks; past the village of Renno hanging overhead, and other hamlets, to more barren hills, and on to the summit of the Col, where a new range of snow mountains lay before us, glistening in the hot sun and cool puffs of sudden wind.

The descent from here into the valley of Christianiccia is singularly wild and beautiful. Our gallop down, accomplished, as it could have been, at such a pace, only by Corsican horses and a Corsican driver, was all too short to drink in the beauty of varying views, of grandest perpendicular rocks, and of graceful ilex woods interspersed with castellated boulders, overhanging the roadside. Such a gallop, however, is delightful and inspiriting over a soft, park-like road, with snow cones peeping out of a blue curtain, with aromatic odours flying by, and with beasts that never lose their footing. It is a dream of cool enjoyment that one would willingly lengthen.

The entire population of the village of Christianiccia appears to consist of boys; and as we drove quickly up the stony street, pursued by scores of these yelling and hooting inhabitants, Antonio's whip was in unaccustomed requisition, and one of Mr. Lear's grasshopper pigs, the first we had seen in the county, narrowly escaped being ran over.

From Christianiccia to Evisa is an arduous mount, somewhat resembling the side of a house; but now, on the left, appears the glorious blue rock called the Capo dei Signori. On the summit of this great rocky wall once stood a castle belonging to one of the old feudal lords of Corsica; hence its name. But not a vestige of ruin is now visible upon the majestic purple peak, which seems to brave the fickle elements, looking over many an intervening mile of hill and vale to the distant sheet of western sea.

And as we turned the abrupt corner of the road to enter Evisa, other glorious blood-red rocks came in view, only half hidden by the nearer hillocks--the rocks of Porto.

The situation of Evisa is bleak and unprotected, and in winter it must be bitterly cold.

Bare rocky mountains surround it on every side, and not even a chestnut-tree relieves its wild nakedness.

Even now, a cold frosty air was blowing, and, although the sun was hot, a thick jacket was agreeable.

M. Carrara's house is still the resort of travellers. He is a polite wood-merchant, and it is supposed to be a private house; but, except for the fact that there is rather less to eat and a little more to pay than elsewhere, it is the same as other inns.

Praise, however, be given where praise is due. We could get neither butter, honey, nor soup for lunch, and the fare altogether was economic; but the young lady of the house, who condescended to wait upon us, was both pleasant to talk to and to look upon, and spotless cleanliness reigned in the little bedrooms.

As soon as we had eaten our omelette, supplied to our hungry appetites on the principle of the acute preacher, who always stopped before he had satisfied his audience, we strolled out down the road towards the rocks of Porto.

About three quarters of a mile from the village, we came to a little break in the road, where a pathway had been beaten down over the brow of the hill.

This pathway led over an old cemetery, lying close beside the road, without palings or protection of any sort. A little rough stone building, a few yards from the road, and not more pretentious than an ordinary cottage, was the now disused cemetery chapel; and numberless little wooden crosses, black and white, but none laying claim to any artistic value, were scattered all about--some standing, and some ruthlessly uprooted and crushed beneath the cart wheels--to mark the now desecrated resting-places of the poor villagers of Evisa.

The church of Evisa stood below, half a mile away, and no doubt was now the fashionable burial-place; but had I been a native of the village, I would have chosen this exquisite hill-side for my last resting-place.

Of all the beautiful scenes witnessed in Corsica, perhaps this was the wildest and the grandest. On one side, the grey and purple rocks of the Capo dei Signori; in front, twelve miles away by road, the wide stretch of blue sea, casting up a thousand sparkling dew-drops to the bluer sky; and, on the other side, rising up from a fathomless gorge just below us, the blood-red rocks of Porto. These rocks are impossible to describe; their grandeur can only be felt, as--from many a shuddering abyss, where the lonely sea-gull circles with faint shrill calls among misty horrors--they rise almost perpendicularly to their fearful height, seamed and notched by many a primeval tempest, but calm, and cruel, and forsaken-looking in their homeless inaccessible solitudes.

Leaving the little path, we clambered down the rocks a short way, and sat in the silence opposite these glorious, fearful rocks.

Not a sound was to be heard but the gulls' cries, and the stream far away, and, close to, the gentle rustling of the countless little lizards among the green rocks beside us.

We sat so still that they grew quite tame, and played around us unsuspectingly. One couple especially amused us. They had a lizard game of romps, chasing each other round our rock with incredible swiftness, whisking out of each other's way, and gently biting each other's tail when caught.

Rain at last drove us home; and we were glad of a good wood fire to sit over in the chilly evening, whilst the clouds dropped below the village, hanging in thick white opaque swathes across the hills before us, or chased each other, far beneath, hiding the valley in rain, whilst we were enjoying a passing gleam of sunshine.

The evening was clear again; and, for the first time in Corsica, we heard the national singing, which continued long after we had retired. It was not musical, nor beautiful, but was the weirdest, strangest vocalism I ever heard. For more than an hour, a party of young men slowly paraded the village street, singing the same melancholy-sounding chant, sometimes in unison and sometimes in parts, but always ending in the same prolonged note.

The tune, such as it was, seemed always to be in a minor key, and would well have suited one of the national _voceri_, or dirges, but I have no idea of the words accompanying it.

This final note is a characteristic of Corsican singing, and rarely omitted; and it is wonderful to what an extent they will prolong it. Even mothers, singing lullabys to their babes, indulge in it, and its effect is wild and uncommon.